So Kamloops, and beyond.

Kamloops, tournament capital of the world,  is clearly very ice sports oriented, as they are hosting the 2016 Women's World Hockey Championship (hard to walk 10 feet without seeing some mention of it) and aside from the real arena they have another hockey rink and a curling club.

We arrived around 6:30, loaded onto Bus #5, which took us to the fabulous Hotel 540.Their name is their address! How clever! Our luggage was sitting in our room. The room had some other stuff in it, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you what. We pretty much immediately left and went for a walk.

The town has one very main street full of shops and restaurants, including a surprising number of bridal shops. So I guess it's the getting married capital too. The other streets were pretty dead so we headed to what was reputed to be a pretty good restaurant, called the Noble Pig. I give you the link in case you were thinking of visiting Kamloops at any point soon.

Although the Noble Pig menu didn’t look very good (talking about appearance only), they had a microbrewery, and as it turned out, the food was quite good. I had an interesting salad topped with grilled salmon, and Ronnie and I shared a charcuterie plate. I had their special, a Coffee Double Dubbel brew, with a high alcohol content and a bit of coffee "for an extra kick," as our cheerful server told us.

With that pleasant surprise literally under our belts, we headed back to the room and promptly crashed. For a bit anyway. We had to be up for a 6:15 AM pickup, so nobody from the train slept well. I got tired of waking up every hour and went for a walk around 5. It was a little spooky, but quiet and kind of pretty, in a dark sort of way. There was a nice full moon and you could hear the frogs jumping and croaking in the river.

Back at the hotel, we arrived downstairs along with everyone else at 6:10 and got back on bus #5, which delivered us back to the train.

The same staff greeted us, Frederico (memorable quote- "You should call out if you see an animal, but after you call out "Cow!" for the thirtieth time I'm going to have to come and talk to you") and Tiffany upstairs, Patrick and a woman whose name escapes me (who shared with us the Robert Service classic poem, The night I cremated Sam McGee) downstairs. Onto the train we climbed and by 7:00 we were on our way. Gotta say, Rocky Mountaineer runs a good shop. Everything was tight and on schedule to the extent they can control that running on tracks shared with freight trains. There are two seatings for each meal; yesterday we were first and today we were second. So the whole front of the car ate together, as did the back if the car. At breakfast time, to keep you busy while you wait for your seating, they give you fresh-baked scones and coffee. Very nice.

So there are a lot of differences between this kind of train trip and an Amtrak kind of train trip, of which I've done several. First of all, this train doesn't stop. You're on the train and moving all day long. Amtrak trains have stations, and sometimes they stop for 5-15 minutes, so you can get off and walk around. Although the food isn't nearly as good, they also don't have the same rigid kind of seatings. You do still sit communally in the dining room. There's also a lounge car, so you can change location on the train itself. On the other hand, this train has a bar open all day from about 10:30 AM until you pull into the station. And it's all included, and you have the opportunity to stand outside, which was really amazing. One of the most fun things there is to see the train turning ahead of you.

The biggest difference, of course, is that the whole train stops for the night and you get to sleep in a hotel. The last train trip I took I had a roomette, which had two seats that slid down to make a kind of bed. I can't say I slept great on that ride, but probably as well as I did at Hotel 540.

So off we went. The sun was rising and there was a mist on the the river.

By the way, the weather on this trip has been the polar opposite of what we got in Ireland. It's been sunny with high of upper 60's throughout, which is extremely unseasonable. It's usually low 60's with showers, just like we got in Ireland. Not a bad trade. But anyway, the mist eventually enveloped the train, but burned off pretty soon, and we were out of the desert and into greener, and mountainer landscapes.

The scenery was one of the few things I've seen that actually merits the descriptor awesome. Mountains, canyons, rivers, bridges. Just incredible. All going by at a leisurely pace with no need to drive or pay attention.

 And the tunnels? Those were fun, especially from outside (if they weren't too long and smoke-filled).

We passed the place there the last spike was struck to complete the Canadian Pacific Railway, and then the Continental Divide. We saw bald eagles, a moose, a grizzly bear and some kayakers ("Humans on the left!") And eventually we pulled into Banff. What a day!

If there are any loose ends, I'll clear them up later, but I want to get this posted.